Treat them just lovely until the moment comes to pluck out their
feathers.
We were soon buried in faro, as you saw while with us, Jennie. I played
the banker and the others staked their money against me upon the order
in which the cards would lie as dealt from the pack. The play ran on for
over two hours. We spoke hardly a word. First along we each staked a
dollar on each layout. But later five. For the first hour—while you were
watching, Jennie—I turned things Abe’s way a little.
[Sidenote: “_Death to the Traitor._”]
I wanted to get him awfully interested. When the time came to throw
things in the other direction, I had to send you home, Jennie, for fear
you would make some remark about my sleight-of-hand that would put
everything in bad. Of course if Abe had not been awful green at cards,
he would have got wise too.
And, Jennie, I remind you this once for all time. The saying is: “Death
to the traitor!” And I know that you love life better than death. See
how easy it would be for me to grab your throat and in a few minutes you
would be a goner without being able even to make a whisper. But I know
you could never do anything but help along your “hero-boy.”
After midnight, Jennie, there happened what I had been looking for. With
trembling hands, Abe opened up his wallet to let us see the three
one-dollar bills still lining it. He said awful plucky: “Fellows, I am
almost at the end of my tether. I need this bit until I can get some
dough from dad.” I felt sorry for the poor kid, patted him on the back,
and handed him ten dollars from my own wad. I said we would play till he
won back his losses. But at last he balked. So I said: “Let’s go to the
bar-room and have a drink.”
Pedro, Tracy, and myself spit out soft soap over our drinks for a few
minutes. For some time I had seen that Abraham was awful worried. He now
hardly opened his mouth except to answer a question. He looked as if he
were all the time saying to himself: “I’ll never get into another scrape
like this again!” But he did not dare even breathe a whisper about us
being sharpers. We were three against him alone, and even sweller
dressed. Besides, being a stranger in New York, he lacked sense.
[Sidenote: _A Sadder, but Wiser “Reub.”_]
I judged it time to escort him to his hotel, because he needed some one
to steady him. He looked a wreck. Because he was not used to champagne
and all. We shook hands with Pedro and Tracy, and boarded a car for the
Grand Union, where all the middle-class Reubs put up. Even when we were
alone in front of his hotel, he did not have the nerve to call me down.
I have fleeced Reubs who have given me a good punch in the mug when they
got me alone. Abe must have thought I am straight.
I shook his hand good-night, patted him on the back for the last time,
and said I would call this coming evening to give him a chance to win
back his money. Of course I never expected to keep the engagement. I
don’t suppose Abe did either. As soon as he got inside his hotel, I
sneaked away as fast as my legs would carry me. For a week, I shall have
to keep away from the Monte Carlo.
[Sidenote: _The Fairie Boy._]
IV. A Stuyvesant Square Pick-up.
It is August, 1895—several weeks after Buddie McDonald had left me in
the lurch, as he had his legal wife, and as he probably through life
went on deserting quon_dam_ soul-mates when having no more use for them.
Furthermore, during this single summer that I frequented the Rialto, I
found it a barren stamping-ground for myself. Nearly all my Lotharios
were of the moneyed class that go out of the city for the heated term,
or at least while away their evenings at a shore resort in the suburbs.
For I did not drift with solid business young men, but with those who
sought an easy life. The book-makers were at Saratoga, the vaudeville
artists at seaside theatres. Even professional gamblers preferred
Saratoga or Long Branch during the months that fools with money to burn
went to those places rather than to little old Fourteenth Street.
But in June I was fortunate in being introduced to some refined “young
fellows” living near Stuyvesant Square, five minutes walk from the
Rialto. Business or a slim pocketbook kept them in the city. I therefore
formed the habit of staging my impersonation sprees in the Square—a park
of about six acres. Within four weeks I had been introduced to several
score young bloods—so many because all belonged to a neighboring club
the talk of which I came to be on my advent because of my
ultra-androgynism and female-impersonation. The majority liked to flirt
with [Sidenote: _An Unrivaled Hercules._] me an hour in the park as if I
were a full-fledged mademoiselle. I was always clothed as a youth,
although exceptionally loud, as fairies are wont. But the present work
will pass over my relations with the Stuyvesant Square club-men because
described in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE.
In that August occurred one of the most eventful evenings of my twelve
years’ career as overt female-impersonator. I had promenaded every path
in the Square without running across any clubman—very unusual on a balmy
evening. Therefore just before dark I seated myself next to the most
attractive stranger in the park, where two thousand people were enjoying
the cool of a scorching day. He looked to be twenty, was rather shabbily
clad, but clean. It was not his features, but his powerful and well
proportioned figure, that attracted me. His hair was red—a favorite
color for neckties, but the very last I would choose for a beau’s
chevelure. His face, while well formed, was close to the very worst
among the more than one thousand young bachelors with whom I have
coquetted. His eyebrows and lashes were blonde and barely visible. His
complexion resembled a sheet of faded pink muslin—a solid color all
over, not rosebud or peachlike, as the lamented Buddie McDonald’s.
Particularly his cheeks were covered with pimples, common in redhaired
men, so that one wonders how they shave. But because of his unapproached
bone and muscular development visible even through his clothes, I did
not like him a whit the less on account of his pigmentary defects.
For several months after that night, I fell in love, at first sight,
with nearly every red-headed adolescent [Sidenote: _Influence of
Environment._] I ran across, particularly if his cheeks were covered
with pimples.
In order to ascertain the trustworthiness, goodheartedness, and
liberalmindedness of the Hercules, I first drew him out craftily by a
long series of questions. Even people in my every-day world have given
me the palm for inquisitiveness. I expected to put myself in the power
of Hercules and needed to find out all about him. I was always
ultra-wary about falling into a trap, as I already had several times in
the Underworld. Androgynes are murdered every few months in New York
merely because of intense hatred of effeminacy instilled by education in
the breasts of full-fledged males.
I learned Hercules’ entire history—providing what he narrated was true.
To my joy he told me he had been reared in a village in the Mohawk
valley. Through heart-to-heart talks with hundreds of strange young
bloods in New York’s Underworld I discovered that boyhood environment
makes a vast difference in adult honesty and altruism. The country-bred
adolescent manual-laborer is apt to be far less vile-mouthed and
pugnacious, and far less likely to assault and rob one of Nature’s
step-children than a young-blood product of city slums.
Only after I had been able to form a favorable judgment of Hercules’
disposition, I began to disclose, by my talk, that I was an androgyne.
From my dress and mannerisms, however, any city-bred youth would have
already judged my sexual status. Hercules later told me he had, but had
feared saying something offensive. He said he had been impatient for me
to declare myself.
[Sidenote: _Author’s Flirtations Mushy._]
The following conversation serves to illustrate and analyze the
hero-worship of the androgyne. It is admittedly mushy. The question is
whether the reader wants the mushy or the untrue. Ordinarily
conversation with a sexual counterpart made me silly. All my flirtations
were mushy. The following phraseology is very close to the actual except
that I have semi-translated Harvey’s dialect into ordinary English.
Further, the reader must educate himself to judge justly even that with
which, as he reads, he does not like to identify himself or make his own
sentiment. For example, two confidential, Platonic literary friends told
me that my original songs published in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE
were “sickening.” They could not sympathize with the androgyne
sentiments and therefore the songs were “shoddy.” Likewise the following
conversation must be judged objectively and the reader’s verdict be
based on absolute reason, not on personal bias—not on the basis of the
reader’s ability to put himself in the place of the Hercules or myself.
It is a conversation to be analyzed scientifically.
“Beau, see how much bigger your hands are than mine! And how horny the
palms! I bet you would give a good account of yourself in a fight!”
“I’ve had lessons in pugilism. Besides I come from a strong-built
family. Me father’s piano-mover and me only brother steeple-Jack.
Meself has worked as riveter on sky-scrapers.”
“So you have wielded a sledge-hammer!” I exclaimed enthusiastically
because of his more and more marvellous revelations.
[Sidenote: _Hero-worship._]
“All day long while steel-worker’s helper on the sky-scrapers.”
“O you are such a wonderful young fellow! Wonderful alone in your
being brave enough to mount the sky-scraper skeletons! And still more
wonderful in possessing the muscle necessary for wielding a
sledge-hammer all day! May I feel your biceps? I am anxious to have my
hands on the very muscle that slung the sledge-hammer!”
“Anything at all!”
“O what a biceps! Like a tremendous boil protruding out of your arm
except that it is hard as steel. Among the scores of Strong Hanses
whose biceps I have been privileged to pinch, you are the muscular
prodigy![31] You must be a terrible slugger! I pity your opponent!
Only a pyramid of jelly after you got through with him! Do you know,
Mr. Strong Hans, that I have fallen in love with your biceps?”
“That’s a funny thin’ ter fall in love with! But just feel me chest
muscles and leg muscles.”
“They are steel!” I cried in ecstacy. “Because of your being a
muscular prodigy, I am driven beside myself in hero-worship! Do you
know what the word ‘worship’ means? It means that I could prostrate
myself with lips to your dirty shoes, and cry out, over and over
again, forever, forever, your wonderful endowments! I could forever
call you Sledge-hammer Wielder! Personification of Strength!
Incarnation of Power! Man of Iron! Mighty Man of Valor! Mighty Man of
Renown! Heaven wills that I, a poor weakling, bow low in adoration of
a muscular prodigy!”
[Sidenote: _A Rare Find._]
“You said it! I’ve got the build of a pugilist. But it’s meself as
needs ter go ter the dentist ter git me teeth filled and haven’t the
price.”
“I’ll attend to that. Because you are a rare find, Mr. Strong Hans!
You are one young fellow out of ten thousand. I mustn’t lose track of
you. Let me tell you the plans that have been going through my head
since I met you. Nature has made it impossible for me ever to marry a
woman. For I am myself really a girl whom Nature has disguised as a
fellow. I only dress as a fellow because the law ignorantly requires
it. Nature meant that I should go through life with a husband—not a
wife, as ignorant society commands. For some years it has been my
dream to take to live under the same roof, as long as God leaves me in
this world, a young fellow who approaches my ideal. And you do as
hardly another I ever met. And I want you to live with me as my
husband. When you reach twenty-five, you may also marry a physical
woman, and she will keep house for us. I shall always regard your and
her children as my own. God has given me much above the average brain
power, and I can earn money enough to support all. You will never have
a care. You need never work unless you want to. For I will be your
slave. Because you possess in by far the highest degree the bodily and
mental endowment that are for me a magnet. You will be paying
[Sidenote: _Full-fledged’s Instincts Equally Unæsthetic._] for all I
do by merely allowing me to gaze at your marvellous build a few
minutes every day.
“You—like every one else—probably think I am a very bad sort of
person. But perhaps you will discover some counterbalancing good
qualities. In reality my bad side is no worse than that [sexuality] of
all other men. The virile call me ‘Child of the Devil!’ The pot has
always liked to call the kettle black. A person always considers right
and high-minded whatever he himself is inclined to, and wrong and
devilish whatever others are inclined to. Because people are thus in
love with themselves and their own tendencies, they will not forgive
my own bad side. Not because it is in any way harmful; merely because
it is so exceptional.
“I have the means to support you from this evening on.[32] I guarantee
you as good a start in life as young fellow ever had. Wouldn’t you
like to become a lawyer or physician? Then why not tell me your true
name and address, lest I lose you? Because until I know you
thoroughly, I can not reveal my own legal name and where I live.
Because people misunderstand so terribly women-men like myself.”
“Harvey Green, Eagle Hotel, Third Avenue.”
“I detest ‘Harvey’ because two acquaintances of that name were such
poor specimens of men. Since you are to be my own personal
sledge-hammer-slinger, I change your name to ‘Tom.’ That is the most
masculine of names, and because you are the most masculine of young
fellows—indeed the Supreme Man—you must [Sidenote: _Common Type of
Sexual Insanity._] be decorated with it. For you appear to be even
_more_ than man. A wonderful visitant from some other world. A
super-man!
“I am afraid, Tom, you may be only a dream. I am afraid you may be
only an apparition with me a brief hour, then to return, like
Lohengrin, to the heavenly realm where the hero is immeasurably beyond
anything we have on earth.
“So from to-night on, your legal first name is ‘Tom.’ And after I have
tried you out, you will take my own legal surname. But my pet name is
‘Prince Wonderful!’ Can you feel, Prince Wonderful, that you charm me
as a serpent a bird that it creeps upon in order to swallow? I know I
am doing something crazy in letting you swallow me; in turning my back
on all my own pleasures and prospects in order that you may get more
out of life. For I would rather be the instrument through which a
demigod like yourself enjoys some good before my eyes than myself to
enjoy it. It is crazy of me; but my instincts lead that way, and I
have the will to act that way. Muscular prodigy! Sky-scraper
dare-devil! Your prodigious strength and muscles cement me to you as
with hoops of steel!”
We soon took a stroll of half-a-mile to the East River, to a
neighborhood of gas-houses, closed factories, and store-yards. No one
ventured here after dark except homeless gutter-snipes in summer to
sleep. I myself would not have ventured at night anywhere near these
dingy and desolate blocks except under the protection of a Strong Hans.
On female-impersonation sprees in the Rialto and Stuyvesant Square, I
was always richly clad and wore jewelry. While during my year’s
female-impersonation [Sidenote: _The Ultra-Unexpected Happens._]
apprenticeship on Mulberry Street my pockets were rifled every night, I
had not now for nearly a year suffered the theft of even a copper. And
why should I entertain even the shadow of a suspicion of “Tom” whom I
wholeheartedly accepted as an unsophisticated youth recently from the
Mohawk valley and to whom I had pledged the usufruct of my fairly good
earning capacity to enable him to live like a nabob? For more than an
hour, on the park bench, he had demonstrated himself supergenial. He had
seemed so glad and so grateful over what I had promised: To lift him
from the slums to an honored professional career. The story of his life
did contain some inconsistencies but I realized it only too late.
As soon as we arrived in an unlighted stone-yard and there was not
another soul within hearing—at least we had seen no one for the last
five hundred feet—Harvey Green suddenly changed to _just the opposite_
of his supergenial and ultra-grateful mask. Only at the moment that he
had me completely at his mercy did he disclose himself as a
dyed-in-the-wool criminal—a fiend who would never give a second thought
to having just committed a murder.
Since I had expected to take him under my own roof and acquaint him with
my every-day professional personality, I had not gone to the extremes of
frivolous female-impersonation customary before young bloods who would
never meet me in every-day life. I had feared I would forfeit his
respect. Thus I had bidden _him_ call me “Ralph”—not “Jennie.”
“Ralph, what a ya think when I say I’ve served time in Elmira
Reformatory? I kin prove what kinder man I am! Reach your hand here and
feel this terrible [Sidenote: _A Seance with a Burglar._] scar. And then
reach it here and feel this other. Ralph, I got these scars from bein’
shot while runnin’ away after havin’ made a mess of burglin’ houses in
villages. For it’s better ter be shot than caught. And I didn’t dare go
ter any doctor. My pal dressed the wounds the best he could, and it hurt
awful—I tell you! And both times the buggers bled and bled till I close
ter croaked. But luck was with me; me guts escaped the pepperin’. And
after I recovered from loss of blood and after the wounds began ter
heal, I was as strong and husky as you see me to-night.
“But just to-night I happened ter be broke. I was just loafin’ in the
park waitin’ for a sissie like you, Ralph, ter walk inter me trap, so I
could git hold of some dough.”
“Harvey,” I could only stammer, being next to speechless because of
surprise and terror, “I am stunned at what you say. I never believed you
could so deceive me. Can I say nothing to bring you to your senses?
Don’t you realize you have ten thousand times more to gain by being my
friend?”
“Ralph, didn’t yez ever hear a bird in hand’s worth two in bush? Besides
I could never be friend ter feller of your nature, Ralph! My hand’s
agin’ you, Ralph! Because I’ve a criminal record, Ralph, every man’s
hand’s agin’ me. And my hand’s agin’ every man. I’m a man without any
heart. I’d as soon put a bullet through a bloke as look at him.
“No, Ralph, the burglar’s life I’ve chosen kin alone afford the
excitement I need. Up me sleeve, I didn’t take the least stock in all
your soft soap as we sat in the park. Your pet names and promises mean
nothin’ ter me at all! You sure must take me for a softy in [Sidenote:
_Method of Robbery._] me promisin’ ter live with a feller like yourself!
You’re now goin’ ter have a taste of what use I have for that kind of
feller! Hand out your money! Hand out your money!”
As he spoke, he clutched a shoulder with one hand and clenched the other
in my face. I handed over my wallet.
“Here! I’ll relieve yez of that watch and chain.... And off with that
ring!... Now take off every stitch so I kin see if you’ve any concealed
bills.”
[Illustration:
Neighborhood Where Harvey Green Thought He “Finished” Jennie June
]
“You’re welcome to all I have on me, Harvey, and I love you too much to
prosecute. Only please, _please_, let me depart unharmed! I forgive
everything! If only you will let me depart unharmed, I will immediately
[Sidenote: _Author Robbed Two Hundred Times._] take you around to my
room and put into your hand a hundred dollars I have locked in my desk.”
“I could n’t do that. It’d be too risky.”
While we argued, I undressed meekly and in unspeakable terror. I
realized I might be experiencing my last five minutes of life. I took as
much time as possible in the hope that a watchman might chance along.
But why a watchman in a store-yard of paving stones?
“I guess now I’ve got everythin’ of value, though not as much as
expected. You sneak, why didn’t yez have more bills onter your carcass?”
On female-impersonation sprees in Stuyvesant Square, I carried less than
ten dollars. But judging from my rich attire and not knowing I had set
out from home just for such a spree, Harvey must doubtless have thought
I had on me a big roll. The present is only one of the most remarkable
of about two hundred adventures I have had with robbers, the thievishly
inclined regularly preying on androgynes because knowing the latter are
themselves outlaws and thus unable to complain to the police.
Incensed over the disappointing size of his haul, Harvey continued: “And
now, you sneak, I’ve got yez at me mercy! There’s not a man within
hearin’! Shut your d— throat, or you’ll be worse off yet! Hold down your
hands from in front of your mug! Hold down your hands! You bastard! You
cannibal! Your nature’s so disgustin’ that every rightminded man would
agree your face oughter be used as a butcher’s choppin’ block! And it’s
me own great joy ter do the job!”
Only about so much of the fiend’s ranting was I able [Sidenote:
_Experiencing Death._] to catch. After I had received several
sledge-hammer blows in the face, fallen to the ground, been kicked and
stamped upon, I entirely lost consciousness. Even while I still heard
his ranting, I hardly noticed any pain. I merely thought I was dying. I
was fully reconciled, and prayed: “Father, into Thy hands I commend my
spirit!”
The next thing of which I was conscious was violent retching—due to
internal injuries. In his youthful verdancy, the fiend had probably
thought he had finished me. But Providence overruled, as in a number of
subsequent similar assaults when I was snatched from the very jaws of
death, whereas every few months I see in the papers that some less
fortunate androgyne has not lived to tell the tale.
I was at first puzzled as to whether I was waking up on the earthly
plane or in another world. Until I fully recovered my senses, I lay
inert. Then I slowly dressed and limped away, having to rest on the curb
every five hundred feet. I searched out a street fountain to bathe my
bloodstained face and try to counteract the swelling and discoloration.
For, most of all, I feared arousing the suspicions of my every-day
circle.
I then boarded a car for home, begging my fare. In its regular hiding
place in a stone wall of a neighboring park, I obtained the key to the
street door of my boarding house.[33] Fortunately without encountering
anybody, I mounted the several flights of stairs and secured my room-key
from its hiding place. On [Sidenote: _Struggling to Save Reason._]
arrival in my own snug harbor, the first thing I did—as always—was to
fall to my knees and bless Providence for permitting me to see home
again.
For several hours, I could not sleep. Every moment I felt as if I would
lapse into insane raving. Every moment I besought God to show mercy on a
persecuted outcast. I reflected on my lot: To go through life as a
cordially hated bisexual. That was my cross, and I repeated over and
over again—in my struggle to save myself from insanity—the identic
prayer that I had at fifteen repeated over and over again on the night I
had consecrated myself, and been consecrated by the brethren of the
puritan church to which I then belonged, to be a preacher of the Gospel:
“Jesus, I my cross have taken,
All to leave and follow Thee;
Naked, poor, despised, forsaken,
Thou from hence my all shalt be:
Perish every fond ambition,
All I’ve sought and hoped and known;
Yet how rich is my condition,
God and heaven are still my own!”
Immediately following later similar assaults, I have had to have my
wounds dressed by a physician before seeking my room, and on one
occasion had to enter a hospital. But on this occasion I waited until
the following morning to summon my physician. He made one significant
remark: “It would be worse than useless for you to try to prosecute your
assailant. The court would immediately turn around and prosecute you as
a felon!”